


Eyes Always Seeking

by igrockspock



Category: Away (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Femslash Festivus, Hopeful Ending, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28249965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: Lu and Mei wait for each other.
Relationships: Mei Chen/Lu Wang (Away TV 2020)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Eyes Always Seeking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annie D (scaramouche)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scaramouche/gifts).



Emma says, “You’ll know the right thing, when the time comes.”

Earth is growing larger in the window day by day. The time is almost here. Her husband, or the woman who was never quite her lover. She’ll have to choose.

Lu shoots her eyes toward Ram, his figure growing distant on the ladder. “Did you ever --”

She swallows the rest of the question, but Emma answers it anyway with a shake of her head. Lu thinks that will be all. Even now, at the end of the mission, the commander keeps herself apart.

But Emma says, “Attraction is one thing, trust is another.” Her knuckles go white against the wrench she’s holding. “Anyway, I made a promise.”

If Lu's lucky, if Kwesi’s god is real, her husband is lying in another woman’s arms right now. A secretary, a university student, a hostess at a karaoke bar, any cliche will do. But she knows he isn’t. They will both live out their duties, and then…

She can offer Mei the chance to break her heart.

***

The letter says September 7, seven years from now, at the Waibaidu Bridge.

That’s all, but Mei understands the rest: _come if you still love me._

It’s the year Lu’s son will turn eighteen, probably the day after she drops him off at university, and she’ll be free. It will mean Mei has waited ten years: the three agonizing years of the voyage, watching from afar, and seven more on Earth, where they could choose to be together.

Her friend Larraine says, “You have _needs._ Think about you!”

“So American,” Mei shoots back.

“Yeah, well, I’m from Houston,” Larraine says. “And honey, take it from someone who’s been there. They never actually _leave._ ”

There are other women, of course: careful, circumspect affairs under the watch of the CNSA while she finishes her assignment in Taiyuan, louder and longer relationships when she goes to work in Hong Kong.

It’s never the same, and eventually, they always notice her noticing Lu every time the TV is on.

***

Lu’s marriage goes silent. They speak of nothing but their son. She flinches away from his touch in bed, a small gesture of faithfulness that Mei can’t see.

In public, they are a united front. She, a model taikonaut; he, a model husband for the new generation. She knows that she has been lucky: there are so few women in her profession because there are so few men like him, willing to mop the floors, handle the after school pickup, step aside so their wives can have the glory.

“They always said they wanted an independent woman,” Emma had said, waving her hand at a line of invisible suitors. “But only Matt actually did.”

This is the trust her husband earned, year after year, watching his wife go into space when his own dreams collapsed. The trust Ram couldn’t purchase, not even in a three-year mission to Mars. Lu trusts her husband this way too, but still it’s not enough to make her love him.

“Women hold up half the sky,” he says dutifully for the TV cameras. 

The ring around her neck -- the one she told him was a gift of the CNSA -- feels hot enough to burn, and that’s the night she almost packs her bags.

But then she walks through the door, and there is her son, shy and formal after the years apart, presenting her with a portfolio of his art. Would they let her keep him, if she left? If she filed for divorce and took up with another woman?

She knows she’ll never risk it.

***

Mei keeps a running commentary of all the things she wishes she could say to Lu, all the questions she wishes she could ask. At first, it’s only in her head. Later it goes in a notebook that none of her lovers ever find.

_What did you do on the New Year?  
What was the most surprising thing about Mars?  
Do you still let your husband touch you?  
What was the first thing you ate when you got back home?  
Did Commander Green really almost kill you all, or were you possibly being a little unfair?  
Do you still wear the ring I gave you, and what did you tell your husband about it?_

The list grows more sparse as the years go on. Sometimes the notebook lays in the bottom of her desk for two months, six months, once even a whole year. But she never can throw it away, no matter how hard she tries.

The answers to all her questions are the price of her heart, she decides. _If_ she goes back. She tells herself she hasn’t made up her mind, keeps telling herself that even while the clock in her head ticks toward the appointed time.

Six months out, she stumbles across Lu's letter at the bottom of a box. She starts growing her hair out, just in case.

Three months out, she buys a bottle of her old hair dye at the drugstore.

So she’ll look the same, _if_ she meets Lu.

***

Lu packs her suitcase with bile in her throat. Her closet is empty; her husband will know that she’s gone. No matter what happens at the bridge, there is no coming back.

Her own incompetence almost dooms the mission. What self-respecting taikonaut leaves meeting coordinates as vague as the Waibaidu Bridge? The steel girders span the river; its wooden planks are choked with lovers and souvenir hawkers and tourists staring at the Shanghai skyline. Mei could be here, waiting, and she would never know. The most important moment of her life, jeopardized by terrible planning.

She walks the length of the bridge again and again, her eyes drawn toward every woman with long dark hair. The sunset is fading from orange to purple-gray when she begins to concede the possibility of defeat. Ten years is a lot to ask for, after all. She will not begrudge Mei the happiness she found along the way.

***

“You’re a terrible taikonaut!” Mei calls. “No coordinates, no meeting time, not even _wear a yellow ribbon in your hair._ Glad you didn’t get lost on Mars!”

She’s trying to keep her tone light, trying to remember that she doesn’t know what she and Lu have anymore, not really. But her heart catches in her throat the second Lu turns around.

Lu’s mouth opens and closes. She says, “You waited for me. All day.”

“After ten years, what’s six more hours?” She means it as a joke, but the bitterness comes out anyway.

Lu nods, understanding. Mei’s afraid she’s going to excuse, explain. It’s the one thing that might make her walk away.

Instead she fumbles for something in her purse. Her hand emerges, holding a stack of blue A5 notebooks, exercise books like her son might have used in school.

She says, “I wrote down everything I wished I could tell you.” She swallows. “In case it helps you decide.”

Mei thinks of her own slender book of questions, tucked neatly into the pocket in the back of her bag. She should go back to her hotel, read what Lu wrote her, make a dignified decision. But their fingers brush together as she reaches for the notebooks. They both freeze, and Mei says, “Do you still remember how to sing?”

She cuts her eyes toward the karaoke bar behind her, the place where she hoped Lu would know to meet her.

Lu shakes her head. “I forgot. But maybe you could help me remember.”

Mei takes her hand and pulls her inside.


End file.
